The printer is one of those objects that never fails in the home and office. For this reason it is important to understand their operation and the alternatives available on the market so that you can choose the best printer for your needs and your pockets.
The printers are not all the same, there are all types of printers therefore, before making a hasty or wrong purchase, we must stop for a moment and buy a more durable, richer in features, cheaper over time and higher quality .
Let's see together in this guide how to choose your printer based on the type of technology (ink or laser), the advantages and disadvantages of the two technologies and why one model is preferable over the other.
At the end we will also show you what we believe are the best printers that you can buy online at the moment, so you can save something compared to buying in a shop or in a shopping center (where often the offers dazzle and easily lead to error) .
Article Index
- Inkjet printers
- Laser printers
- Characteristics of a good printer
- Buying Guide
Inkjet printers
Ink Jet printers work through small nozzles that spray ink on the paper at high speed: sliding on the sheet they generate the image sliding perpendicular to the sheet, until the area of the sheet is full of details and outlines to be printed. The print cartridges contain the color pigment that will be sprayed on the sheet through a print head (which takes care of opening only the nozzles necessary to pour that precise point of color on the sheet at that precise moment).
Inkjet printers are very popular and popular because they are good for all types of prints, including photos. They can print black and white documents, color photos and print on different types of paper (see here the guide to print digital photos with your home printer ).
One defect of these printers is certainly the printing speed: they are notoriously slow, even if this speed changes a lot according to the type of print requested (fast enough for black and white documents, slow for photos and images that fill the whole sheet).
Although inkjet printers seem cheap to us at the time of purchase, the real expense is on the cartridges: if a new printer can cost even less than 50 Euros, when you need to change the cartridges, you go to spend 30 Euros or more to change a complete set; multiplying this expenditure 2 or 3 times a year, we realize that the running costs are decidedly high . If we don't want to spend so much we can always buy compatible (non-original) cartridges even if the print quality suffers a lot.
On balance, inkjet printers are perfect for those who print a few documents and for those who print a few photos every now and then: they lend themselves very well to home use .
READ ALSO: Which portable printer to buy
Laser printers
The other type of printer involves the use of a laser-based printing process : an internal cylindrical plate is charged with a negative electrostatic charge, therefore a laser head removes the charge in the parts of the image where the toner. Once the negative is created, the plate passes over the toner and imprints the image on the sheet (which in the meantime has been positively loaded, so as to attract the toner). At the end of the process the toner is fixed on the sheet with a fuser and pressure roller (that's why the sheet comes out slightly hot) while the cylindrical plate is emptied of the residual toner and its residual charge removed, so that the next sheet can be printed immediately.
The difference with inkjet printers is the higher speed, since with a single turn of the cylindrical plate you can print a whole sheet and the whole process can be repeated in a few seconds. The toner used in these printers is dry in laser printers so it can last for months or years if it has not been used for a long time. The maintenance cost is also very low in relation to the printed pages: a single toner can last up to 5, 000 sheets and more, and compatible toners further reduce the cost.
Even if the initial cost is higher, over time you can be sure of a significant overall saving. The only real flaw lies in the dimensions: they tend to be bigger and heavier than the Inkjet printers, so we won't be able to place them anywhere in the house (often it will be necessary to allocate a corner or piece of furniture only to the laser printer).
The evolution of laser printers are LED printers with a solid state matrix to speed up the printing process even more, without losing quality.
The laser printer is ideal if you make frequent prints of text documents in black and white but also for printing in color (even if the costs of managing toner increase dramatically in the latter case).
They are the ideal choice for small offices, businesses and for all professionals who print many sheets during the day.
Characteristics of a good printer
Once you've decided which type of printer you're interested in buying, there are still a lot of features and differences to consider. Let's see the main technical parameters written on each printer label:
- Resolution / DPI : DPI is synonymous with dots per inch and indicates how many dots of ink or toner are deposited within a square inch of printable area. The nomenclature of dots per inch for printing is completely different from the nomenclature of pixels per inch used with monitors: a computer monitor is much more detailed and always has a higher color rendering than printed ink. Print technology has improved so much in recent years that the number of PPE has become irrelevant. 150 DPI is already an acceptable level for draft prints while 300 DPI is perfect for magazine quality. Low-end inkjet printers generally have a print capacity of 300-600 DPI; if you spend more, you can even get to over 1, 000 DPI. Laser / LED printers range from 600 to over 2000 DPI.
- Print speed : Almost always it is expressed in PPM (pages per minute), but you can also see other abbreviations such as CPM (characters per minute) or, if you are for photo printers, IPM (images per minute). Laser printers are significantly faster than Inkjet. Most often manufacturers tend to inflate the print speed value.
- Types of connection : The times when printers connected to computers via serial or parallel ports are long gone; the current standard for cable connections is USB . Some printers are equipped with a cable or wifi network card and this becomes very convenient if you want to put the printer somewhere away from your computer.
- Remote printing : One of the most recent features on the new printers is the support for cloud printing which becomes excellent for printing documents or photos from your mobile phone. There are specific printers to print via Airplay from iPad or iPhone while for Android, Blackberry and iOS itself you can always use the free Google Cloud Print service . HP provides its own cloud printing service called ePrint.
- Internal memory : Classic inkjet printers usually have very little internal memory while those with scanners have more memory. Laser printers generally have larger amounts of internal memory (ranging from 128 to 512 MB). Generally speaking, network and Wi-Fi enabled printers have enough memory to handle print jobs from multiple computers. Unless you intend to print large volumes of material in a short time, printer memory is an irrelevant parameter.
- Multifunction / All-In-One : Multifunctional printers are those with additional features, typically including the scanner and fax machine . The scanner integrated into the printer allows it to be used almost like a copier. Personally I always recommend that the printer with built-in scanner appears because it is really useful.
- Printers without PC or Stand-alone : this type of model is mainly used in companies and they are independent printers that work even without a connected computer. They have a USB port which can be used to bring files to the device and print them. If you use to print photos, stand-alone photo printers are very comfortable because you just have to insert the SD card of the machine.
- Compatibility with operating systems : Those who use Windows do not have problems of this type but those who use Mac computers and, above all, Linux should check if there are compatible drivers.
- Duty Cycle : this value is often found in the technical specifications sheet and indicates the number of printable pages in a month without problems. This is an indication of strength and wear resistance. Obviously, the older the printer, the more this Duty Cycle decreases.
- Duplex (even automatic) : some printers allow you to print on both sides of a sheet automatically, others must be configured manually, which is very inconvenient.
- Multipurpose tray : If you are printing on different types of cards, cards, envelopes, or any other type of format, the multipurpose tray is important for respecting margins.
- Cost of consumables and cartridges : before purchasing the printer, it is advisable to check the prices of the cartridges and see which are the cheapest. I don't want to talk about brands or models here because they are numerous and because it is impossible to have a complete overview. I would just like to underline an interesting difference between the Epson printers and the HP DeskJet: the Epson use 4 different cartridges whose cost is about 8 Euros each, the HP instead use two cartridges: one in black and white from 15 Euros and one 20 color. The difference is that with HP you can only buy the black and white one and the printer works normally while Epson obliges the user to always buy all 4 cartridges. I also recommend checking if you can use refillable cartridges (in the case of Inkjet) or if there are good cartridges, even non-original ones. For laser / LED printers make sure that only the toner drum can be replaced.
Buying Guide
After having seen together the best features of both types of printer, let's see together which models to buy online. We will present the best inkjet models and the best laser models, which are in turn divided into monochrome models (which print in black and white) and color models.
READ ALSO: Best WiFi multifunction printers to buy
Cheap inkjet printers
- HP Deskjet 2630 (35 €)
- HP Deskjet 3735 (42 €)
- Canon Italy PIXMA MG3650S (43 €)
Multifunction inkjet
- Canon Italy PIXMA TR4550 (39 €)
- Epson Expression Home XP 257 (49 €)
- HP OfficeJet 3831 (€ 62)
Monochrome laser printers
- Brother HL-1210W (€ 63)
- Samsung SL-M2070 Xpress (103 €)
- Brother DCPL2550DN (€ 158)
Color laser printers
- Brother HLL3210CWYY1 (157 €)
- Oki C332dnw (178 €)
- HP Pro M281fdw (€ 229)
If we are looking for specific printers for photographs, we refer you to reading our guide below.
READ ALSO -> Photo printer to print color photos: which one to buy
